Case Studies

Harbour Town

Overview

The hugely successful Harbour Town, still to this day boasts the largest outlet shopping centre in Australia (Harbour Town Gold Coast). With centres located in 4 states, including Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne & Gold Coast, Harbour Town is recognised as a leader for brand direct shopping.

Harbour Town understood the need to expand its online presence, which had been well established with individual sites for Corporate and State. However, the boom of social media and the importance of Google friendly standards determined it was time for an overhaul - an overhaul that would provide a significant amount of challenges.

The sites prior to 2010 used Flash for all the centre directories and maps, so not only were centre staff unable to update information but the information was invisible to search engines. Other issues included a severe lack of functionality for social interaction with Facebook and Twitter. The design had dated considerably and had to be updated in conjunction with JAM’s new branding guidelines. Finally usability was an issue, as the sites were difficult to navigate and did not feature important information in an order of priority.

For such a large contract Alltraders had some exceedingly talented competition when tendering for the job. After putting forward a great proposal, with revolutionary ideas for revamping the Harbour Town family, Alltraders successfully won the job!

In late 2011, a newly updated design was deployed across all four centre websites, with increased social network integration with Facebook and Twitter, and more emphasis on the directory.